16
Jefferson, Blind Lemon. “Rabbit Foot Blues.” Blind Lemon Jefferson. Rec. 1926.
vocal blues-recording scene, but Jefferson’s records were popular and spurred the demand for more blues singers like him to be recorded.17
Several artists have used the metaphor of the blues jumping the rabbit after Blind Lemon Jefferson. In her song entitled “Blues Jumped the Rabbit,” Karen Dalton uses the image to get across a very different meaning than that present in “Rabbit Foot Blues.” Blind Lemon’s song is a lighthearted number with lyrics like “I have Uneeda biscuits gal, and a half pint of gin” (Jefferson). Dalton’s song takes a very different approach as a melancholy folk ballad with a slow tempo and images such as “Wish I was in cool Colorado, on some mountain so high.”18 A third manifestation of the lyrics can be seen in blues legend Taj Mahal’s number, “Good Mornin’ Miss Brown,” which uses the metaphor of the blues jumping the rabbit alongside lyrics such as “You know I got the misery and a back ache baby/ And my feets hurtin’ me when I walk.”19 All three artists bring out very different meanings from the common image of a “blues jumping a rabbit.” In following this pattern, Ellison uses the
metaphor in order to convey his own meaning in describing Severen’s state of mind. In this light, Ellison joins in the songwriting tradition alongside Blind Lemon
Jefferson, Karen Dalton, and Taj Mahal.
The rabbit ridden by the blues is a helpful image in evoking Severen’s dilemma for several reasons. Severen is described as a “white child” with “black- seeing eyes,” into whose “white skin” the blues “dug in its spurs.” In other words, Severen is the rabbit with a white appearance who is taken over by his blues sensibility or “black-seeing eyes.” These blues then rode him “one solid mile,” back
17
Jefferson, Blind Lemon. Blind Lemon Jefferson. Rec. 1926. Liner Notes, p. 2.
18Dalton, Karen. "Blues Jumped a Rabbit." Rec. 1962. Cotton Eyed Joe.
to Oklahoma in search of his true identity. Through his knowledge of the blues and jazz tradition, Hickman is able to pick up on Love New’s reference and fully
understand the significance of the description.
To end their encounter, Hickman and Love New reveal their gained understanding of one another through the following conversation:
“Now that you’ve become my brother in medicine, when you know more about what the boy’s up to, come back and I’ll do the listening.”
“I’ll be glad to share whatever I learn,” Hickman said. “And this I can tell you right now: One thing that I learned as a musician was how to listen. So when it comes to you I’ll listen, and carefully, to anything that you have to say.” (TBS, 851)
Love New confirms that their shared experience has led them to become “brothers in medicine.” This bond is made possible through Hickman’s ability to listen to Love New “as a musician” who weaves together different influences from his past in the forging of his unique voice. Through Love New, Ellison combines the “high Indian timbre” and “black southern idiom,” as represented respectively by Love New’s artful lying and reference to a blues standard, in order to create a uniquely American storyteller and soloist.
Part 2: Cliofus
Hickman’s continued search for Severen leads him to seek out a young man named Cliofus, who grew up alongside Severen as a fellow foster child of Janey Glover. Janey informs Hickman that Cliofus works as a performer at a nightclub called the “Cave of Winds” where, as Janey puts it, “he has a job of saying filthy toasts for those drunkards and telling them stories!” (TBS, 853). Hickman decides to go to the club to see Cliofus perform in order to gain information about the possible whereabouts of Severen. Upon entering the nightclub, Hickman describes the club as follows: “Warm and friendly, the room’s atmosphere was alive with that tension of hopeful expectation which he knew to arouse the best efforts of jazz musicians. Yes, and the best revival meetings. For both shared some of the same hopeful
anticipation of joyful fulfillment” (TBS, 862). Along with once again stressing the connection between jazz and religious performances, Hickman’s description sets up the Cave of Winds as a location where “public rites” are performed, similar to sites of the religious revival and the jazz hall discussed earlier in connection with Hickman’s performance style.20 The description also places Cliofus, the upcoming performer, as a “jazz musician” whose “best efforts” will be brought out by an excited and engaged audience.
Before Cliofus enters the stage, a man named “Buster,” who owns the nightclub and also grew up in Janey’s home with Cliofus and Severen, provides an introduction for Cliofus. Through the use of the name “Buster,” Ellison presents a riff, which takes its origin from one of Ellison’s previous works of fiction. In the short story collection Flying Home and Other Stories, Ellison uses two boys named “Riley” and
“Buster” as the protagonists of several stories. One story in the collection, entitled “A Coupla Scalped Indians,” includes a character named Buster but is distinct from the other Buster stories in that it is told in the first person. The narrator, who is left unnamed, tells the story of when he and Buster traveled through the woods to
complete Boy Scout tests, as well as to make their way to an event where they knew jazz would be playing. The two boys get sidetracked, and the narrator has a
troubling but transforming interaction with a mysterious woman named “Aunt Mackie.”21
The narrator of the story shares many characteristics with the boy Severen from Three Days Before the Shooting…, and these similarities are so evident that they could not have been created incidentally by Ellison. In the following passage, the narrator reveals these similarities through a description of his family: “I had no family, only Miss Janey, who took me after my mother died (I didn’t know my father)” (FH, 69). Both boys lost their mother at a young age, did not know their father, were brought up by a woman named Janey, and grew up alongside a boy named Buster. These similarities, along with the fact that the narrator in the story is left unnamed, both allow for parallels to be drawn between this boy and Severen, and further, suggests that they are in fact the same person. In Ralph Ellison in Progress, Adam Bradley comments on the way in which Severen is left somewhat ambiguous as a character in Three Days Before the Shooting…
For all his importance, however, Severen gradually loses his corporeal presence in the novel becoming…a disembodied voice, a shadow, a name and abstract motive, and finally almost nothing at all. At times Hickman wonders whether he has seen him in a crowd, but by the time Hickman looks back to confirm it, Severen is gone. (Bradley, 143)
Bradley is accurate in his assessment of Severen as a character who becomes an “abstract motive” in the narrative of the second novel in that he simply serves to lead Hickman in his wanderings through Oklahoma and Washington D.C. The similarities that Ellison maintains between the second novel and “A Coupla Scalped Indians,” however, act as signifying riffs that lead the reader to consider the narrator of this short story as the voice of Severen. This riff serves to provide the reader with a brief look into the mind of a character that is otherwise left relatively unknown in the narrative.
The connection between these two characters becomes stronger through the following description that the narrator from “A Coupla Scalped Indians” offers to portray the mysterious character, “Aunt Mackie.”
Ho Aunt Mackie, talker-with-spirits, prophetess-of-disaster, odd- dweller-alone in a riverside shack surrounded by sunflowers, morning-glories, and strange magical weeds (Yao as Buster during our Indian phase would have put it, Yao!)… Aunt Mackie, nobodies sister but still Aunt Mackie to us all (Ho, Yao!); teller of fortunes, concocter of powerful, body-rending spells (Yah Yao!); Aunt Mackie, the remote one though always seen about us; night consulted advisor to farmers on crops and cattle (Yao!) (FH, 68)
The narrator uses “Yao!” as an expressive tool in much the same way that Love New used the term in his oral performance discussed earlier.22 The narrator says that he learned the term from Buster who made use of it during the two boys’ “Indian phase.” If Buster and the narrator are assumed to be Buster and Severen, these clues lead the reader to imagine Buster to have been inspired by the voice of Love New who, in the second novel, acts as a mentor to the two boys during their childhood. In the middle of “A Coupla Scalped Indians,” Buster and the narrator can hear the playing